Christmas Traditions - Christmas Sugar Cookies

As a child, my Mom made these delicious and buttery sugar cookies every year at Christmas. She'd take out her red Christmas book and flip through the pages to this one recipe. She'd use her hands to mix the dough and when I was old enough, recruited me to mix the dough with my hands. I'd feel the texture between my little fingers and smell the sugar, that is how I identified Christmas.

I loved her Christmas book. The dust cover is long gone and the spine reads, Take Joy! I used to sit and stare at the illustrations in the book. I dreamed of doing all the Christmas things that they were doing. This book is long out of print but remains a favorite in my heart. This year I liberated the book from her bookshelf so I could make sugar cookies with my girls.

I gathered all the ingredients and laid them out so Molly could easily combine them. The great thing about about this recipe is that you literally dump all the ingredients in a bowl and start mixing them with your hands. I thought I was smarter than the recipe and tried using my KitchenAid Stand Mixer to mix the dough. That was a mistake! My poor mixer could not handle it and I ended up finishing the job by hand mixing the dough.

I'm pretty sure the girls and I are going to adopt the tradition of making Christmas Sugar Cookies. As they grow, they too can have the dreaded task of mixing the dough by hand which I hope they eventually learn to love and eventually pass onto their little ones.  

Christmas Sugar Cookies
by Rebecca Mongrain


Cook Time: 10-12 minutes




6068453



Ingredients (5 dozen cookies)

1 pound unsalted butter
2 whole eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 3 Tablespoons milk
Nutmeg for dusting cookies




Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with hands until smooth. The great thing about this dough is that you can mix, mix, mix without repercussions.

3. Form into a ball, dust with flour and chill throughly. Break into smaller pieces and roll as thin as possible. Dust with granulated sugar and nutmeg. Using cookie cutters or round glasses, cut into shapes.

4. Bake until the top of the cookies are light brown on top, about 10-12 minutes. Place on cookie racks to cool.


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